Hire a Hangman (25 page)

“When people like that snap, though …” Hastings let it go provocatively unfinished.

She made no response. With her first flare of anger fading, she returned to her chair, began impatiently picking at the chair’s arm with bright red fingernails. Her expression had turned sullen, moody.

“I gather control was Brice Hanchett’s thing, too.”

“Except that they were exact opposites. Compared to Jason, Brice was a volcano.”

“But the result was the same. They called the tune, manipulated people.”

Her eyes turned bitter. “Doctors are gods. Hadn’t you heard?”

“That sounds like you aren’t too fond of doctors.”

Eyes gone cold, she was watching him as one duelist might watch another, anticipating the next thrust.

“You don’t like doctors. But you were involved with two of them—two doctors who worked with each other.”

She made no reply.

“I think,” Hastings said, “that you were using your sexual relationship with Hanchett to taunt Pfiefer. And if—”

“That’s none of your goddamn—”

“And if I’m right, then we’re back to motives for murder. And it comes down to the oldest motive for bloodshed in the world—two men lusting after the same woman. You.”

She sprang to her feet, flung out an arm, pointed a quivering forefinger at the door. “Get out, you son of a bitch. Get out, and don’t come back.”

Moving slowly, deliberately, Hastings rose, went to the door. With his hand on the doorknob he turned back. Saying: “You’re a beautiful woman, Mrs. Pfiefer. You’re beautiful—and you’re trouble.”

7:30
PM

“What we’ll do,” Canelli said, “is I’ll try to get him out of the building so you can get a look at him.”

“What d’you mean, you’ll try?” Dolores demanded. “How come you don’t just tell him?”

Canelli sighed. “The guy isn’t a suspect, Dolores. Not really. We’re just—” He broke off, searching for the phrase. “We’re just conducting an investigation, that’s all. We’re fishing. Like, I don’t even know what the guy looks like.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “You asked. I’m telling you. The lieutenant interrogated him. Not me.”

“Don’t you even have a picture?”

“No,” he admitted.

“You guys aren’t very well organized, are you?”

He pointed to a van parked in front of Vance’s apartment building. “Why don’t you stand behind that van, there? You can see him through the van windows, I think. Without him seeing you.” As he spoke, he switched off the cruiser’s engine, set the emergency brake.

“What’s the difference if he sees me?”

“You’re sure asking a lot of questions, you know that?”

Ignoring the point, she repeated the question. Finally, exasperated, Canelli said, “If he’s the one, and if he recognizes you, then he could split before we get warrants. This isn’t the wild west, you know. We do what the judge tells us to do.”

“Ah.” Satisfied, she nodded. Then, severely: “Remember, I’ve got to be home by eight-thirty, no matter what.”

“Guaranteed.” He turned toward her, felt the closeness, smiled into her eyes. Briefly the moment held between them. He touched her shoulder hesitantly. Then, about to speak, he saw her eyes move sharply, tracking something outside the car, over his shoulder. Was it alarm he saw in her eyes? Recognition? Speculation? Something else? He began to turn, but she gripped his forearm.

“Wait.” Her voice was soft, her eyes cautious.

“What’s wrong?”

“That looks like him.”

Following her eyes, Canelli turned slowly to face the apartment building. A man was striding up the walkway that led to the building’s lobby. Visible only from the back, the man wore jeans, a leather bomber jacket, and high-top Reeboks. He was of medium build and moved easily, athletically. His hair was dark blond, stylishly cut and shaped. In the crook of his left arm he carried a brown paper bag of groceries.

“Wait here.” Canelli eased out of the car just as the man thrust a key into the glass and metal door of the small lobby, entered, and strode quickly to a flight of stairs adjoining an elevator. As the man’s legs disappeared, climbing the stairs, Canelli lunged forward, his hand touching the door a moment after it clicked solidly closed.

Muttering a heartfelt obscenity, Canelli turned to the building’s registry. There were four floors. “C. Vance” was listed in 305. Canelli considered a moment, then pressed the buzzer for 305. No response. He tried again. Still no response. Nodding to himself, he walked back to the cruiser, leaned down to the open driver’s window. “I’m going to give him a couple of minutes, then try him again, see if he’s up there.”

“Remember. Eight-thirty.”

“Relax.” He returned to the apartment building’s glass entry door just as the elevator doors opened to reveal a large, flamboyantly dressed woman cradling a small dog in her arms. The woman wore rings on her fingers and thumbs; the dog wore a red ribbon.

Canelli waited for the woman to pass through, then caught the open door.

“Just a moment, please.” The woman’s voice was deep and imperious.

“It’s okay.” He smiled affably. “Police business.” Without waiting for a reply, Canelli began climbing the stairs, arriving at the third floor out of breath. As he walked to 305 he calculated the odds. What was the probability that the identification was accurate? Fifty percent? More? Less? What were the chances that Clayton Vance and the man in the bomber jacket were one and the same? Eighty percent? More?

At the door of 305, finger poised over the buzzer, Canelli hesitated. Would Hastings want him to actually talk to Vance, interrogate him? Or were his orders to simply collect data and pass it on? Did Hastings want Vance stirred up? Or did he want Vance lulled into a false sense of security? It was pick and choose time, the subordinate’s constant lament.

He pressed the button, waited, pressed it again, longer this time. He looked up and down the empty corridor, then stepped closer. About to press his ear to the door, he heard the latch click. The door swung open, revealing, full face, the man Dolores identified.

Clayton Vance.

Frowning darkly, Canelli said, “I’m looking for Lester Parks, the guy that’s working on your TV cable. I’m from Cablevision. Have I got the right apartment?” He looked over Vance’s shoulder, as if he expected to see Lester Parks. Good old Lester; they’d known each other since childhood. Whenever Canelli needed a quick fake name, he was never at a loss.

7:50
PM

“So was that him?” Dolores asked.

“Yeah. At least that’s what the name on the door says.” Canelli flicked on the radio, took the microphone from its hook.

“So now what?” she demanded. “Now can I go home?”

“In just a minute. First I gotta make a call.”

“Well, just so you don’t—”

“Wait,” he interrupted sharply. “Shut up a minute, will you?” He called Police Communications, requested contact with Lieutenant Hastings, who was in the field. As he switched to a discreet channel and waited for the patch-through, he turned his gaze to the woman beside him. In apology for the harsh words, he smiled tentatively. Her response was a frown. Then she turned away, allowing Canelli to study the swell of her breasts and the graceful curve of her dusky throat and the surprisingly delicate line of her cheek and forehead. Had her ancestors been Mexican noblemen? Had—?

“Inspector Fifty-three?” It was Hastings.

“Roger. Fifty-three.” Canelli responded.

“Go ahead.”

“Clayton Vance,” Canelli said. “I’ve got a tentative ID on the gun possession.”

“Where is he?”

“At home.”

“Where’re you? There?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“What’s the address?”

“Seven-fifty-one North Point.”

A silence. Then: “Okay. You stay there. I’ll come by in fifteen, twenty minutes. We’ll see what we’ve got. You don’t think he’s running, do you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Sit tight.”

“Ah—sir?”

“What is it?”

“I, ah, I’ve got the informant here—the female informant.” As he said it, Canelli saw Dolores stir, almost a flounce.

“And?”

“And she’s, ah, got to be somewhere at eight-thirty.”

“No problem. Cut her loose. I’ll talk to her later.”

“Well, ah, the thing is, if I don’t take her—drive her—she won’t make the appointment. And it’s important. It’s part of the deal.”

Even over the static-sizzling radio, Hastings’s irritation was clearly audible. Finally, testily: “Okay. Go ahead. When you’re clear, go back to Vance’s. I’ll be there.”

“Yessir. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hastings answered. Adding dryly: “Please.”

8:20
PM

“Jeez, Dolores, all I’m asking you to do is give me a figure, so I can pass it on to the lieutenant. You say Vance could be the guy. You say maybe, then you say probably. So what is it? Fifty percent? Eighty? Thirty? What?”

“Will you please watch where you’re driving? God, I thought cops were good drivers. Don’t you have to go to school or something to learn to drive?”

“I’ve never,” Canelli pronounced gravely,
“ever
had a traffic accident.”

“You’ve probably caused a hundred.”

“Dolores. I’m getting you home by eight-thirty. So will you please answer my question?”

“How about sixty percent?”

“Is that what you’re saying? Sixty percent? Is that your answer?”

“Shit,
Canelli, I already
told
you. Sixty percent.”

“You don’t think it’s the mustache, do you?”

“The mustache?”

“Vance is the only one of the four guys that’s got a mustache. Do you think that’s what you were looking at?”

Exasperated, she sighed. “All I can tell you is what I already said. Of the four guys, he looks like the closest. The next closest is the one with the beard. The doctor. He—” She interrupted herself. “There.” She pointed. “Turn on Guerrero. Get in the right lane.” She looked over her shoulder to see if traffic was clear.

Elaborately resigned, he made the turn without comment.

“It’s two blocks now.”

“I know.”

As he drew up in front of the house, Canelli checked the time.

“Twenty-five minutes after eight. As advertised.”

“Good.” Frowning slightly, she sat squarely, looking straight ahead. Her nose, Canelli noticed, was small and slightly up-tilted, an appealing nose. Grace’s nose was bulbous, and had once been broken in a field hockey game.

“Listen, Canelli …” The frown deepened, the generously curved lips compressed, as if she were framing a complicated thought, searching for the words. “I don’t know whether I thanked you for getting Oscar out of that place.”

“You thanked me.”

“Yeah.” Stiffly formal, she nodded. “Yeah, I thought I did.”

Another moment of silence descended. Deeply aware of each other, they both stared straight ahead. Finally, speaking softly, she said, “You want to come in for a couple of minutes, say good night to Oscar? I think he, uh, likes you.”

Pleased, Canelli smiled. “Sure. Just for a minute, though. Great. Thanks.”

8:25
PM

At this time, in this place, the entirety of his life had come down to this: two elemental problems, both of them related to a nickel-plated .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic pistol.

The first problem: where to hide the gun so the police would never find it.

The second problem: explain to himself why he hadn’t dropped the gun through a sewer gate. Or dropped it in a trash container, or a box of debris. Why hadn’t he taken a shovel with him on Wednesday night? Why hadn’t he driven from the Bell house to Golden Gate Park on Wednesday night, and buried the gun?

Why was the gun here, concealed in bedding stored on the top shelf of his wardrobe closet—the first place Hastings and the others would most certainly look?

There was only one reason—one logical answer.

The answer was murder.

One more murder.

Was it a statement, a fact? Or was it a question?

Aware that his legs and arms were heavy and his neck unaccountably weak, as if the muscles were hardly able to support the weight of his head, he rose from the chair and went to the window and looked out into the gathering dusk.

Questions and answers …

Lights shining from household windows, streetlights glowing in the darkness …

When he’d been a child, he’d had to go home when the streetlights came on. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d had to go home. Stay out too late—wander so far from home that he couldn’t return soon enough, and he risked a spanking.

A spanking when he was very small, a beating when he was older—old enough to take the beating, but still so young that he must be home before dark.

In the broom closet in the hallway just off the kitchen, his father had kept a braided leather whip. When the offense was serious enough, his father used the whip instead of his hand. Once, in the summertime, when he’d been wearing shorts, the whip had drawn blood across the calves of his legs.

And once, when he was in high school, when he’d come home on a Saturday night, he’d heard his mother screaming. He’d found her on her knees in the bedroom, her nightgown shredded across the back by the braided leather whip. Eyes wild, legs braced wide—drunk—his father had stood over her like some demented slave master, lashing a slave.

Called by the neighbors, the police had come that night—come and gone.

And now the police could come again—come for him, not for his father.

8:50
PM

“Sixty percent, eh?” Dubiously, Hastings rubbed his jaw as he stared out through the cruiser’s windshield at Vance’s apartment building. With darkness, more than half of the buildings’ windows were illuminated, with shadows inside, moving.

“She said she thought it was between Vance and Pfiefer.”

“What I’m wondering,” Hastings said, “is whether she’s telling you what you want to hear. You get her kid out of juvie, she wants to appear cooperative.”

“Yeah.” Heavily, Canelli nodded. “Yeah, I thought of that, too. Except that she picked out Vance when he was just walking along the sidewalk, before I even saw him. And in fact it wouldn’t’ve made any difference whether I saw him or not, being that I didn’t even know what he looked like. So when you think about that, then you have to think about—” Suddenly Canelli broke off, pointing to a nondescript green van just pulling into a parking place across the street and extinguishing its headlights. “Hey, isn’t that the electronic surveillance van?”